Abraham Maslow (1954, 1955) was one who questioned the
assumptions
that pain avoidance and tension reduction motivated most
human
behavior. He believed that if we are to investigate the
prime movers
of humanity, we must focus not merely on avoidance behavior
but look
at seeking behavior as well. Whereas pain avoidance and
tension
reduction often lead to behavior that could be characterized
as the
easy way out, for most it is not enough to merely remain
inert until
threat prompts an avoidance response. Maslow believed
that the
significance of our lives constitutes more than just the
sum total of
our avoidance responses. It is the striving for growth,
happiness, and
satisfaction that seems to inspire us to go beyond the
minimal effort
to sustain life and to put forth the effort required to
enable us not
only to improve ourselves but to improve our lot in life
as well.

The need to strive toward fulfillment and enhancement that
Maslow
advocated appears especially well suited to explaining
why some
married couples are fairly satisfied with how their financial
affairs
are managed, whereas for others, the degree of dissatisfaction
with
their financial situation leads to divorce. In many eases,
the married
couples who are satisfied have been able to establish
a budget that
provides not only for the maintenance of life but for
the enhancement
of the quality of their lives as well.

Just stopping the foreclosure, getting out of debt, or
having enough
food on the table is not enough for most couples. The
majority need to
formulate a financial management plan that goes beyond
being able to
stay alive--one that helps give meaning to life. Frick's
(1971) view is
similar: Meaning plays a major role in goal setting. Without
meaning,
even after having achieved a particular goal, many are
left with the
empty question "What difference does it make?" Couples
who have not
formulated meaningful goals often feel frustrated and
discouraged,
wondering what difference it makes whether they work harder
or not.

When couples are faced with the fact that they are unable
to make it
on one salary, the decision is often made to have both
partners enter
the labor market. Unfortunately, many find that even with
a second
income, they're still not making it. The whole treadmill
process makes
their efforts seem futile and meaningless. Weisskopf-Joelson
(1968)
maintained that personal meaning "lies in a belief system
that
provides structure and significance to one's life" (p.
373). Maslow's
hierarchy of needs is capable of providing this kind of
structure, and
even though there is debate over the ability to test empirically
Maslow's "hierarchy of needs" (Mathes & Edwards, 1978;
Wahb &
Birdwell, 1976), this hierarchy can still provide a model
by which the
role that finances play in a marriage can be better understood.

Maslow proposed that human needs can be arranged in a hierarchy
of
potency and priorities, the lower needs being more potent
and
therefore tending to take precedence over the higher ones
in need
gratification. According to Frick (1982), "For Maslow
the
gratification of each need in the motivational hierarchy
is a
biological prerequisite for attention to the next higher
need" (p.
36), which means a lower level of needs must be satisfied
before a
higher level can be satisfied.

As most readers probably know, Maslow's hierarchy is composed
of five
levels. The lowest level concerns one's physiological
or "survival"
needs. The second level deals primarily with safety needs
and the
third with love and belonging needs. These first three
levels are what
Maslow termed "deficit needs," whereas the remaining two
levels,
esteem needs (Level 4) and self-actualizing needs (Level
5), are
"growth needs." Maslow agreed with Allport (1955) in the
distinction
that "deficit motives do, in fact, call for the reduction
of tension
and restoration of equilibrium," whereas "growth motives
. . .
maintain tension in the interest of distant and often
unattainable
goals" (p. 67).

This distinction seems to be of particular importance to
couples who
have been managing, or more precisely, mismanaging, their
financial
affairs by either distorting the needs of a particular
hierarchical
level or by attempting to bypass needs of a lower level
in preference
for those of a higher level. In either case, the end result
is that
tensions are not reduced in the lower levels, and tension
is not
maintained in the higher levels. Such might be the case,
for instance,
if a husband were to buy his wife 25 pounds of potatoes
as a birthday
gift. The husband informs her that because she had been
complaining
about how the food budget was not providing enough money
to feed the
family, he decided to buy her a gift that would be practical.
The gift
of potatoes may help satisfy her survival needs from Level
1 but be
woefully inadequate with regard to satisfying her love
and belonging
needs in Level 3.

LEVEL 1: SURVIVAL NEEDS

From a financial standpoint, satisfying the Level 1 survival
needs
involves a wage earner's ability to meet the fundamental
needs of
food, clothing, and shelter--the basic needs of the family.
Unfortunately, far too many couples treat the monies allocated
for
food as a flexible part of the family budget that can
be thought of as
the "Peter" that can be robbed to pay "Paul" when money
gets tight. As
a consequence, many families, especially low- and fixed-income
families, tend to buy food with the money that left over
after paying
the rent, utilities, and other fixed bills such as car
loans and
monthly payments on credit cards.

From a hierarchical perspective, however, many of these
contractual
debts arc acquired in an attempt to satisfy needs from
a higher level
than the survival needs. According to Maslow, the higher
levels should
not be addressed until after the survival needs are satisfied.
It is
important that marriage partners recognize such discrepancies
when
they are setting up priorities regarding the allocation
of resources.
Basically, they are being asked to recognize the unreasonableness
of
buying a new microwave oven (because everyone has one)
and then,
because of the payments, being unable to buy food to cook
in it.

Providing adequate food for the family is paramount to
the family's
physiological and psychological well-being and must not
be seen as the
first place to cut corners. Besides, a food budget that
is too austere
may prove to be not only nutritionally insufficient over
an extended
time but may indirectly lead to higher dental and medical
expenses.

PSYCHOLOGICAL SURVIVAL

The austerity factor must be considered whenever a food
budget is
being developed. A budget cannot be too austere because
with a "bare
bones" type of budget, even if the food allotment were
sufficient to
sustain life, the quality of that life may be of such
a low level that
a family's psychological survival needs could not be satisfied.
In
other words, how long would a person want to go on living
at a
subsistence level? A budget that eliminates everything
but the
essentials is a budget that is destined to fail. Neither
man nor
families can live on bread alone. Therefore, to increase
the chances
of a budget succeeding, it should, whenever possible,
allow for
favorite foods and nostalgic dishes, as well as holiday
specialties
and traditional ethnic or religious meals.

When dealing with the psychological survival needs, family
values,
traditions, and rituals need to be considered as well
as income. As
human beings, we give value and symbolic meaning to both
objects and
events, and as a result, certain things may come to symbolize
or
represent something special to us. This phenomenon is
especially true
of food. From infancy, food is frequently associated with
feelings of
love, security, and well-being. Favorite foods, special
preparations,
and rituals often become an integral and essential part
of food
consumption. For example, consider the difference between
a family in
a low-income apartment eating frozen TV turkey dinners
on Thanksgiving
Day and a family sitting down with grandparents and loved
ones for
Thanksgiving dinner after a morning of being surrounded
by the smells,
flavors, and the socialization so often associated with
preparing a
Thanksgiving dinner. Both could say that they had turkey
for
Thanksgiving, but most of the psychological survival needs
would not
have been met in the first situation.

NEED FOR A SECOND INCOME

Over the past few decades, the cost of living has steadily
increased
to the extent that family incomes sometimes have had a
difficult time
keeping up with these increases. Nevertheless, the median
income of
the single-wage-earner family increased by almost 30%
between 1955 and
1986 (including an adjustment for inflation). In 1955,
the median
family income for a single-wage-earner family was $17,693
(in 1986
dollars); in 1986, the median income for these families
had risen to
$24,390. Yet even with these kinds of increases in income,
families
appeared unable to maintain themselves without going into
debt. As a
consequence, more and more families began relying on a
second income.

For many married couples, the addition of the second income
held with
it the hope of getting out of debt and being able to enjoy
some of the
"extras" in life. As a consequence, by 1987, over 61%
of all mothers
were employed outside the home, over 57% of all families
had both
husband and wife working, and women made up over 51% of
the U.S. labor
force (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1989). The median
income for
dual-income families grew to $44,666 in 1986, or two and
a half times
what was being earned (again in 1986 dollars) that 1955
parents were
using to raise their families. Unfortunately, even with
the addition
of a second income, families continued to go deeper in
debt. (Since
1970, consumer debt has increased from $131.6 billion
to almost $730
billion by 1988).

A partial explanation for such a paradox can be found in
the
difference between what is earned and what is actually
realized from
the second income. Due to job-related expenses, such as
taxes,
insurance deductions, retirement contributions, dues,
extra clothing,
and child care costs, only about one half of the second
income is
actually available for family use. Hanson (1991) pointed
out that
those in the upper-income group will lose about 68% of
the gross
earnings from a second income, the middle-income group
will lose about
56%, and lower-income families will lose about 46%.

TWO INCOMES--THREE JOBS

This depiction of "real" earnings has been especially discouraging
for
the women who are in the paid labor force for 40 hours
a week and also
have to put in another 32 hours a week working at home.
In spite of
technological advances, there is still a great deal of
work that needs
to be done in the home, and both the perceived quality
of the marriage
and individual happiness depend on how fairly these responsibilities
are distributed (Yogev & Brett, 1985). Unfortunately,
research
indicates that wives who are employed outside the home
contribute more
to homemaking chores than do their husbands (Abdel-Ghany
& Nickols,
1983; Bernardo, Sherhan & Leslie, 1987) and that individual
incomes
strongly influence the division of labor in the home (Hiller
&
Philliber, 1986). Kamo (1988) found that "the more a husband
earns and
the less money a wife makes, the less the husband's share
in domestic
work" (p 198).

Much of the discrepancy that exists between the amount
of housework
being done by husbands and wives appears to stem from
the perception
that the "women's movement" was just that: a women's movement,
whereby
the women moved and the men tended to stay right where
they were. Many
wives naively assumed that because they had changed, their
husbands
would change, too. In contrast, most husbands saw no reason
for a
change in themselves. After all, they now found themselves
in a world
where they not only had everything they had before (someone
to raise
the children, clean the house, prepare the food, and so
on) but, in
addition, they now had someone earning money to help pay
the bills.
For many husbands, the issue was not who would do the
housework but
how his wife might earn more money.

SECOND INCOME AND DIVORCE

Wives who attempt to earn more money, however, often find
themselves
in a catch-22 situation: The more they work, the more
likely the
marriage will end in divorce. Yeh and Lester (1987, 1988)
found
through a survey of census reports for the continental
United States
that the higher the proportion of married women working
full-time and
the lower the proportion working part-time, the higher
the divorce
rate of the state. In states where a greater percentage
of wives
worked part-time, the divorce rates were lower.

This relationship between the amount of hours that married
women work
and divorce rates is supported by the research findings
of Spitze and
South (1985). They found that the number of hours that
wives worked
outside the home had a greater impact on the probability
of a divorce
than did the size of her earnings and that this relationship
was
strongest among middle-income families and in families
where the
husband disapproved of her employment. As a consequence,
the wife's
efforts to make more money not only does not decrease
family
indebtedness but actually seems to increase the chances
of her
marriage ending in divorce.

What often happens next is analogous to the white rat experiments
in
which two rats are placed in a cage with a floor that
can be
electrified. When the rats arc first put in the cage,
the electricity
is off, and the rats merely explore their new surroundings.
After a
period of acclimation has passed, the electricity is turned
on and the
rats begin to leap up and down, trying to escape the pain
and
discomfort. However, within a short while, they stop trying
to escape
and aggressively turn on each other. They bite, scratch,
and maul each
other as if to say, "I'm in pain. You arc here. Therefore,
you must
have something to do with the cause of my pain." Of course,
the other
rat has nothing to do with the fact that some researcher
with a morbid
curiosity turned on the electricity, but proximity is
often all that
is needed to qualify as someone's scapegoat.

A similar phenomenon appears to occur among husbands and
wives: "I'm
in pain. You are here. Therefore, it must be your fault."
The blaming
and fault-finding that emerges from this point of view
can be not only
damaging to the relationship but destructive to individual
feelings of
self-esteem. As Crump (1992 [this issue]) pointed out,
"We do not
fight with weapons. We fight with property" (p. 671).
The main events
in such fights can be witnessed in almost any divorce
court.

LEVEL 2: SAFETY NEEDS

The primary challenge facing married couples in meeting
their safety
needs is knowing what it is they fear and whether or not
these fears
are based on reality or just imagined. Safety needs deal
primarily
with providing direct and indirect protection of oneself,
loved ones,
and property. In a direct sense, families face the problem
of
acquiring adequate protection against disease, accident,
and crime as
well as the need to provide adequate security for their
property and
assets.

For most families, property and assets translate into what
the family
calls "home." Being able to come up with the rent, build
a house, or
pay the mortgage is often paramount to maintaining a sense
of
well-being. How safe a family is from being evicted or
how likely the
couple will face a foreclosure is often directly related
to the amount
of income that the couple is able to earn compared to
the size of
their indebtedness.

Although most lending institutions recommend that home
buyers limit
their liability to no more than 25% to 30% of their income,
it is not
uncommon to find home owners with mortgage liabilities
in excess of
50% of their income. In cases where there appears to be
excessive
mortgage liability, at least some of the excess would
be attributable
to attempts at bypassing survival and safety needs in
order to satisfy
esteem needs.

According to Rector (1989), the reason for this kind of
excess resides
in changes that have taken place with regard to how much
we are
spending rather than changes in how much we are earning:
"We have
experienced not a decline in earnings capacity but a profound
upward
`revolution of expectations' in living standards; . .
. we have
largely forgotten the actual income levels and standards
of living of
the preceding generations" (p. 522).

Eggebeen and Hawkins (1990) found that many mothers were
entering the
labor force not so much to provide basic family needs
but to provide a
higher standard of living. According to these researchers,
"when
married mothers cite economic motives for their employment
outside the
home, they are referring to standard-of-living preferences
rather than
basic economic necessities" (p. 54). As a consequence,
couples no
longer appear to be merely trying to "shelter the family"
but trying
to satisfy esteem needs by obtaining higher social status.

When buying a home, renting an apartment, or leasing a
condo, the most
important question to consider is "What is sufficient?"
Being able to
answer this question is essential to being able to satisfy
physiological safety needs as well as psychological safety
needs.
"What is enough house?" . . . "enough money?". . . "enough
security?"

SEEKING SECURITY

Many people become preoccupied with attempts to gain a
sense of
security through acquiring material possessions--land,
money, and
other "things." Others seek security by attempting to
perpetuate a
particular socioeconomic way of life. In most cases, families
try to
achieve a sense of permanence. But because land can be
lost, money can
be stolen, and socioeconomic positions can be precarious,
some
feelings of insecurity will usually persist.

Notice, however, that married couples are most often trying
to achieve
a feeling of security rather than actual security. As
a consequence,
it is often a very fine line between providing what is
needed to
satisfy a couple's physiological safety needs and what
is required to
satisfy their psychological safety needs.

PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY

One of the primary distinctions between physiological safety
and
psychological safety is that physiological safety deals
mainly with
external threat, whereas psychological safety deals mostly
with
internal threat. Internal threats are, for the most part,
self-generated, most often from a "what if" world manufactured
by each
member of the family. What if I lose my job? What if I
cants keep up
the payments? What if I don't get the raise? Even though
most of these
fears will never be realized, the stress from the worry
is very real.

Satisfying safety needs depends a great deal on a couple's
ability to
deal with the world as it is and not with how it might
be. Life offers
few guarantees; therefore, security is most likely to
be found in the
knowledge that one will never be totally secure. To cope
effectively
with the unexpected, it is more advantageous to develop
greater
self-confidenec and flexibility to deal with what does
happen in life
rather than focusing on attempts at controlling what might
happen in
life.

COPING WITH STRESS

In Reality Therapy, Glasser (1965) proposed that if a person
fears
something and can do something about it, he or she should
do it. If
not, forget it. Glasser appeared to advocate that clients
act
responsibly to effectively satisfy their safety needs.
This means that
if a major source of stress is the fear that creditors
will find out
that a spouse has been laid off from work, then call the
creditors and
tell them of the situation. Ask the question "What is
the worst thing
that could happen?" If a couple feels that they could
cope with the
worst that could happen, then why fear it? If they do
not think they
could cope, then there is a need to develop greater self-confidence.
In some cases, it is helpful to recall how effectively
they have coped
with difficult challenges in the past.

Having couples develop an accurate perception of their
strengths and
weaknesses is crucial to achieving sufficiency within
the
psychological area of the safety needs. As mentioned earlier,
the
primary objective in satisfying safety needs is to have
each
individual come to know whether or not his or her fears
arc real or
imagined and to learn how to cope with them effectively.
Keep in mind
that a sense of safety will come from confidence in being
able to deal
with one's fears, not in denying them. In many cases,
some of the
greatest financial threats to the family are those that
are
self-generated. Therefore, in order for family members
to stop
generating fear, he or she must become aware of the internal
threats
that create these fears, such as feelings of inferiority
and
inadequacy and of being unlovable. Once they feel reasonably
secure in
these areas as well as the other areas associated with
the safety
needs, they arc ready to expand into Level 3, love and
belonging
needs.

LEVEL 3: LOVE AND BELONGING NEEDS

To meet one's love needs, a person must first feel safe
enough to love
without demanding reciprocation. If an individual loves
someone and
that person rejects this love or fails to love back, that
person
has--tragically-- missed an opportunity to experience
being loved.

Unfortunately, in many marriages, love is seen as a commodity
that can
be bought, sold, and exchanged for goods and services.
As a
consequence, a great many marriages have ended in financial
disaster
due to attempts at buying love. In such instances, there
is a tendency
to substitute gifts for feelings and to substitute money
for time.
Busy parents, for instance, frequently go heavily into
debt in an
attempt to compensate for guilt feelings associated with
not being
able to spend as much time with their children. In many
cases, both
the parents and the children come to believe that money
and things arc
the equivalent of love. Unfortunately, this kind of situation
is
likely to become more prevalent in today's world of dual-income
families, reconstituted families, and divorced or separated
parents.

DUAL-IN COME CHALLENGES

Satisfying the love and belonging needs is even more difficult
when
the dual-income family is a dual-career family. One of
the distinctions
between a dual-income family and a dual-career family
is that in the
dual-income family, those employed typically view work
as a source of
economic security without an organized sequence of intellectual
or
promotional sequence in mind. In contrast, the person
who is career
oriented views work as a developmental job sequence with
clearly
formulated goals and time frames for reaching certain
milestones
(Rapoport & Rapoport, 1971).

The two management systems most commonly used by dual-income/
blended
families arc the shared management system and the independent
management system (Heath, 1986; McCrae, 1987; Pahl, 1983).
Under the
shared management system, both partners share in the managerial
tasks.
Both incomes are deposited in a joint account, and both
partners
discuss allocation issues and try to arrive at a consensus
for
distribution of funds. It has been found that marriages
in which
partners had equal control over financial decisions, either
by making
joint decisions or by agreeing to assume responsibility
for specific
[asks, had the least amount of conflict (Blumstein &
Schwartz, 1983;
Schaninger & Buss, 1986).

The main problem associated with the shared management
system is the
element of trust, or more accurately, the lack of trust
within a
relationship. Many of today's children are being raised
in families in
which the parents have divorced and remarried only to
divorce again.
As a consequence, there are fewer examples of trusting
relationships
in which no one felt exploited. With these kinds of perspectives,
it
is difficult to trust in the durability of relationships.

The blended families (stepfamilies) that result from remarriages
in
which one or both partners bring children from a previous
relationship
have become an ever increasing part of the American way
of life. Over
17% of all households with children are blended families
(Glick,
1989). In interviews with couples who had remarried, researchers
asked, "What issues or concerns did you discuss before
you married?"
The most frequent topic mentioned was "children from a
previous
marriage," followed by "finances" (Ganong & Coleman,
1989). Because
the financial demands of a blended family are typically
more complex
than in an original marriage, the problems associated
with the
management of resources is correspondingly more stressful
(Messinger,
1976). As a consequence, more and more individuals have
developed the
belief that the only one you can really trust is yourself,
and
therefore you had better play it safe when it concerns
protecting your
assets.

One way of playing it safe is to use the independent management
system. In this system, each spouse deposits his or her
income in
separate accounts, they agree that neither spouse shall
have access to
all of the income, and specific financial obligations
are assigned to
each spouse. For example, one spouse would be responsible
for paying
the mortgage and the other for paying the utilities. Each
spouse would
be responsible for his or her own car payments, insurance
payments,
and car maintenance costs.

As a consequence of this separation of tasks and responsibilities,
however, there is a tendency to develop a "yours, mine,
and ours"
attitude toward the distribution of income (Jensen &
Jensen, 1981).
Unfortunately, when this attitude becomes extreme, it
creates feelings
of emotional distance (Glickauf-Hughes, Hughes, &
Wells, 1986). Again,
one of the more measurable outcomes of such a perspective
would most
likely be divorce.

Unfortunately, more and more couples are trying to satisfy
their
belonging needs through consumption rather than through
contribution.
However, if the truth were to be known, it is more likely
that these
individuals are attempting to satisfy safety or esteem
needs rather
than love and belonging needs. Should this prove to be
the case, it is
important for a couple to refocus on their efforts to
satisfy Level 3
by having them concentrate on relationships rather than
things and on
giving rather than getting.

LEVEL 4: ESTEEM NEEDS

In attempting to achieve sufficiency at Level 4, individuals
must
consider both the need for self-esteem and the need for
spouse esteem.
A person will most likely satisfy self-esteem needs through
developing
his or her full potential. By developing individual talents,
a person
becomes more capable of making contributions and therefore
is more
likely to achieve a sense of significance and relevance;
as a
consequence, such a person is more likely to experience
a sense of
self-worth and self-respect. Spouse esteem, on the other
hand, usually
comes when a person's contributions are recognized and
appreciated by
his or her partner.

Crucial to achieving sound financial practices, as well
as a sense of
personal fulfillment at this level, are the couple's intentions.
Are
their intentions to express their self-worth or to impress
each other
with how much they think they arc worth? Self-worth is
often expressed
through what a spouse can or cannot do and at what skill
level. In
contrast, impressing one's spouse is often expressed through
what he
or she can and cannot buy and at what price.

The need to impress others is most often found in individuals
who wish
to gain acceptance by those they perceive to be at a higher
socioeconomic level than the one they perceive themselves
to be at
(note the apparent failure to achieve sufficiency in Level
3). In such
cases, couples may engage in what is commonly referred
to as
"conspicuous consumption," acquiring goods and services
not because
they are needed but because they are expensive or because
others in
the group already have or want them. These individuals
tend to see
themselves as inadequate when compared to those they see
as
successful, and as a consequence, they are constantly
trying to prove
themselves to others.

Again, as at the love and belonging needs level, the issue
is between
contribution and consumption. For the insecure individual,
the primary
question is "Am I earning enough?" believing that his
or her spouse
will stay in the relationship only as long as the income
is high
enough to make it worthwhile. The inherent problem with
this
orientation is that it often becomes very difficult for
a spouse to
distinguish between being valued for what kind of person
he or she is
and being valued solely for what kind of income he or
she can bring
in. The questions often arise about whether the couple
is staying
married because of their accumulated assets or because
of feelings of
affection and the quality of their relationship. If it
appears that a
couple would rather not even address such a question,
then Levels 2
and 3 may not have been resolved adequately.

Another source of dissatisfaction is the dependency that
many couples
have on the things that money can buy. They frequently
come to believe
that their self-worth, their self-esteem, rests on the
figures found
on a balance sheet rather than on the mutual respect and
affection
found in an intimate relationship. Fortunately, there
are many
individuals who do not adhere to the belief that people
are worthwhile
only if they have lots of money; such individuals are
considered to be
self-actualizing.

LEVEL 5: SELF-ACTUALIZING

As a self-actualizing couple, each spouse has grown to
realize a great
deal of his or her potential. Each will have achieved
sufficiency in
the levels of physiological needs, safety needs, love
and belonging
needs, and esteem needs. They are now better able to be
for the sake
of being and do for the sake of doing. For example, one
spouse may
choose to be a sculptor because he or she wants to be
a sculptor--to
sculpt for the sake of sculpting. Such a person does not
work for the
purpose of winning a prize or solely to earn money but
rather to
experience his or her creative abilities.

For couples who are self-actualizing, work is often perceived
as a
medium for self-expression. They may very well earn a
living, but it
is an inner satisfaction they seek rather than fame or
fortune.
However, the ability to earn a living through a form of
self-expression is usually made possible only if they
have truly
satisfied their lower needs; otherwise, their work may
still be
dedicated to seeking tribute, recognition, or material
gain.
Developing a means of self-expression is an expansion
of efforts to
maintain lower-need levels and not a substitute for these
efforts.
Self-actualizing people are often better able to recognize
and accept
the realities of life and the fact that they will not
be able to be,
do, or have everything. They therefore tend to be as efficient
as
possible with their time, energy, and money in order to
achieve a
balance in the allocation of their resources.

In contrast, some individuals remain preoccupied with thoughts
of
becoming rich and frequently indulge in daydreams about
what life
would be like if they were wealthy. As a consequence,
their
expectations of how much money they will make, as well
as how quickly
they will make it, tend to be somewhat unrealistic. Such
individuals
tend to spend money they don't have and as a consequence
often incur
large debts. However, rather than facing up to the reality
of the
situation, they frequently develop elaborate, and often
complicated,
manipulative techniques to maintain the appearance of
being able to
live at a given economic level.

Self-actualizing people are not "superpersons" but rather
individuals
capable of responsibly expressing their individuality
as fully as
possible. Self-actualizing individuals are more able to
accept not
only who they are being but when they are living; that
is, they are
not likely to attempt to be someone they are not nor to
live in the
past or too far in the future. Their budgets tend to reflect
these
values. Credit is used sparingly so as to avoid an overcommitment
of
today's labors to the payment of a debt resulting from
yesterday's
consumption. Rather than comparing themselves to others
and spending
competitively, self-actualizing couples tend to concentrate
more on
self-improvement and devote their monies toward this end.
Rather than
being overly involved with wishful thinking and fantasy,
which often
lead to the development of unrealistic expectations and
unfulfilling
life-styles, self-actualizing individuals tend to organize
financial
goals so that whatever is necessary and sufficient has
first priority.

It would seem paradoxical for individuals to strive to
be
self-actualizing while simultaneously acquiring an unserviceable
debt
load or to be able to satisfy love and belonging needs
while
encouraging loved ones to buy whatever they want in hope
that it will
be enough to prevent them from leaving the relationship.
Self-actualizing couples are more likely to solve their
financial
management problems by focusing not only on their financial
needs but
on their personality needs. Applying Maslow's hierarchy
of needs
permits both the temporal and emotional needs of a family
to be
synthesized into one uniform, integrated approach to establishing
an
effective, fulfilling pattern of behavior that applies
to all aspects
of their lives.

WHERE ARE WE HEADED?

There is no doubt that the 20th century has been one of
change and in
many ways, one of progress. As to how much the American
family has
progressed or benefited from this change is a matter of
great debate.
At the turn of the century, in a primarily agrarian society,
the needs
of the family came first in deference to the needs of
the individual.
As we prepare to enter the 21st century, the needs of
the individual
appear to come first in deference to the needs of the
family. An
individual's worth used to be measured more by what he
or she could
contribute, whereas in today's world, an evaluation of
individual
worth appears to depend more on what he or she can consume.
During the
20th century, we may have become a society that loves
things more that
people, and as a consequence, many have come to believe
that
relationships are undependable and that all we have to
do is acquire
more things in order to be happy. As a counterperspective
to such a
belief, l propose that we all contemplate the adage "You
can never get
enough of what you don't need because what you don't need
can never
satisfy you" (Poduska, in press).

Yeh, B., & Lester, D. (1988). Wives who work full-time
and part-time:
Correlates over the states of the USA. Psychological Reports,
62,
545-546.

Yogev, S., & Brett, J. (1985). Perceptions of the division
of
housework and child care and marital satisfaction Journal
of Marriage
and the Family, 47, 609-618.

~~~~~~~~

By BERNARD PODUSKA Brigham Young University
_________________

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Source: American Behavioral Scientist, Jul/Aug92, Vol.
35 Issue 6,
p756, 15p.
Item Number: 9211167432